End of the Line
by jelenamichel
Summary: Tony has more than a passing familiarity with how he feels after someone he loves is gone. And he's beginning the get that feeling again. Tony's POV on a horrific accident that leaves Gibbs on the brink, and brings him and Ziva closer.


_Just a week after I said I didn't know whether I'd post another story…here we are. I've been reading other fics and got inspired to finish this. I don't know of this is a story to enjoy, exactly, but it is what it is._

* * *

Tony has lost count of the number of times in his life he has been scared. Truly scared, to the point that he is sick, or shaking, or paralysed. For a grown man in his line of work it is difficult to admit, and in fact he never will. Not aloud. Not to anyone who knows who he is and what he does. But he knows how it feels to be terrified of loss, because he has more than a passing familiarity with how he feels after someone he loves is gone.

And he's beginning to get that feeling again.

…

In his gut he knows Gibbs isn't going to recover from this. Perhaps they won't lose him now. Perhaps he'll live another 20 years. But he will not return to work now. He will not be the man he was. His life—Tony's life, Ziva's life, Abby's, McGee's, Ducky's—has changed significantly and permanently.

Tony has always thought of himself as being adaptable to change. But this seems beyond his ken. He can't work out where he should go from here. He can't bring himself to make the plan for which he knows the others will rely on him. He needs someone else to do it—it would be a perfect task for Gibbs—but he knows it is something he can't delegate. It's all on his shoulders.

He wants to be sick.

…

He lifts his eyes from the off-white linoleum floor to look around at the others. Tears are still rolling down Abby's cheeks as she clings to McGee's side, but her painful sobs from earlier in the evening have stopped. McGee is staring at nothing as he rhythmically strokes Abby's hand. His face is pale as the floor and his eyes are dull with foresight. Ducky's expression is one of sorrowful acceptance, which only serves to bring bile to the back of Tony's throat. Jimmy is pitched forward, holding his head in his hands and drumming his fingers against his skull. And then Ziva…

He sees himself mirrored in her eyes. The fear. The anger. The hurt. He sees it under harsh hospital lights despite her poker-straight face. He sees it in the way she picks at her thumbnail despite the otherwise casual way she holds herself. He sees it when her raw gaze meets his, and they stare at each other across the width of a hallway and they both pray for a miracle.

In his heart, he knows it won't come.

…

He is provided both the privilege and the horror of being allowed in to see Gibbs when he comes out of his first surgery. He doesn't trust his memory when he is so paralyzed by possibilities, and so he mumbles something about Ducky being Gibbs' physician at the doctor and she gives him a double pass to the worst show in town. As they follow her down the hall she tries to prepare them for what they will see at Gibbs' bedside, but Tony is only half-listening. Tubes, needles, blood. These are all standard, and Tony is familiar with their presence around the critically injured. His brain is filtering out what it considers white noise so it may focus on the truly gut-churning pieces of information. Lacerated spleen, skull fractures (multiple), shattered bones. He catalogues and dissects this information before they reach the curtain, and determines that the next five minutes will probably traumatize him forever.

"Okay?" the doctor asks them, pausing with her hand on the curtain, and Tony realizes that she's asking if they have prepared themselves. Ducky gives her the green light as Tony nods, even though he wants to say no. The curtain is ripped back with such force to make him grind his teeth.

…

The mess he finds behind the curtain is too much to process all at once, and his eyes return to a small patch of dried blood on Gibbs' neck each time he feels overwhelmed. It would have come from the head injury that is covered by a bandage that will need to be changed again within the hour.

His left eye is swollen. ( _It's likely he will lose some sight._ )

His left leg is strapped between long, bright orange blocks to keep it from moving. There is another bandage, already bloodied, where his leg was de-gloved above the knee. _(He'll need further surgery on his hip and femur and months of rehabilitation, as well as a skin graft.)_

"He ruptured his spleen," he hears the doctor say, followed by something about possible infection in his abdominal cavity. _(Critical injury.)_

Dried blood on his hands, bruising and scrapes. He must have made a hell of a dent in the car that ran him down.

His eyes return to Gibbs' neck.

"Where is it?" Ducky asks, and Tony tries to tune into the conversation.

"Over the parietal lobe. We use this part of our brains for things like awareness of our own bodies, recognition of other people—" _(He's never going to be the same again.)_

"Yes," Ducky cuts in.

Tony is almost sick again. He swallows acid back down.

"There's blood on his neck," he says.

The doctor leans down and peers at the patch below Gibbs' ear. "We'll get it cleaned up," she assures Tony with almost obscene calm.

As if that will make everything better.

…

He's disappointed with himself when he has to rely on Ducky to update the others. While it may make more sense for the person with the medical degree to explain the scale and impact of the injuries Gibbs is dealing with, he feels like he has failed his first leadership test.

This is what brings on his guilt; the thought that he is not the man Gibbs is.

…

They leave hours later only when it is beyond useless for everyone to stay. Their one big group splits along three well-worn lines; Ziva is his constant shadow, and in that he finds a few breaths of calm. But conversation in the car is bleak.

"How did he look?"

Ziva's voice is thick with restrained tears, and Tony feels his stomach turn. He considers lying to her. The desire to be a source of strength and comfort for her is bone-deep. But she wouldn't buy his lie, not for an instant. And he realizes he needs her comfort as much as he needs to give it.

"Bad," he sums up, and then attempts to clear the grief that is caught in his throat. "Fallible."

She draws a deep breath. It sounds harsh and raw. "What do you think?"

The question is vague, but her meaning is not. "Best case, months of recovery ahead. Off active duty for…I don't know. At his age he probably won't ever return."

"Yes he will." Her tone does not leave much room to argue. But he does, indirectly.

"I don't doubt his will." He leaves the rest for her to fill in.

"Worst case?"

He doesn't really want to answer that, and tears burn his eyes when he gives it a moment's space in his head. He thinks he can hold on if he just avoids looking at her. "Let's not give that oxygen yet."

He takes her silence as agreement.

…

When he looks back, he won't be able to say for sure who moved first. He just knows that one moment they are standing in her kitchen and staring at the floor in shattered silence as they try to process the enormity of what they're dealing with. In the next they're a mess of lips and hands and he knows this is what he wants in that moment. He's scared and sad and he needs her. It's Ziva who turns the moment into something more urgent, and he'll hold onto this later when he thinks back and feels crushing guilt that they focused on their needs and wants while Gibbs was teetering on the brink. But in the moment, he just focuses on her. And himself. And definitely not the shitty situation that has fallen over them that night.

He doesn't pay any attention to the shedding of their clothes. Later, he will have no recollection of it. He just knows that there is a moment when he stops kissing her to look at her, and he finds her beautiful and bare-skinned. He feels her hands around him, urging him to come to her, and then he goes back to crashing his lips against hers and gripping any part of her body that his hands come across. A small voice tells him this is not how he wanted it to go. He didn't want it to be something to dull their pain. His better sense tells him to stop before they regret it. But he doesn't. And neither does she.

For a little while, it's not one of the worst nights of his life.

…

It's so dark and quiet afterwards that he doesn't even want to breathe in case he shatters the moment. He's desperate to keep contact, to keep this intimacy going so that he doesn't fall apart and have to live alone in reality, and so he runs his hand back and forth over her hip. Although Ziva is awake, she doesn't pull away. It's a small thing that gives him hope that this isn't the beginning and end of them all at once…and then he feels utterly ashamed to be thinking of his best future when Gibbs is facing his worst.

His hand stops moving. He feels sick again. And then Ziva rolls over and shows him her back.

…

He is mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. But he doesn't sleep.

The physical space between him and Ziva creates mental space for the image of Gibbs in his hospital bed to return to his traumatised memory. Now he can't stop seeing it. Can't stop thinking about what it means. He's not their team leader anymore, and probably never will be again. He may not even be able to ever _speak_ to them again.

He keeps thinking of the laundry list of injuries Gibbs sustained, and he can't help but draw comparisons to the injuries he's seen on bodies in Ducky's morgue. He's not sure he's seen anyone suffer as many serious injuries in one go and survive, and in his heart he knows it's some kind of miracle that Gibbs is still with them right now.

In his heart, he doubts he will be for much longer.

Tears prick the back of his eyes, but he's not ready to cry. Not yet. The time will come.

…

At 3 am his mind finally stops torturing him about Gibbs in favour of torturing him about Ziva. It occurs to him that after her father died, she slept with another old and trusted friend. The significance of this turns his body ice cold. He knows she had no intention of using the intimate act to change her relationship with Adam. She used him for comfort. Now, when faced with the similar situation of losing not her father, but a father figure, he realizes she has possibly acted in the same way; used an old and trusted friend for comfort. Nothing more. Her only intent being to find a way to get her through the night, and with no thought for what comes in the morning.

The scenario brings a slice of pain to his chest so sharp that he gasps aloud in the dark. He finds himself unable to accept that she has used _him_ like her friend Adam, and he immediately (and perhaps predictably, when it comes to Ziva) tries to rationalize her behavior. He tells himself she would not use him. Not _him_. Not when she knows how he feels, or when he knows how she feels. She has had her cold and heartless moments in the past, but she wouldn't…

She couldn't…

He suddeny wants to slip quietly out the door and never deal with the horrific possibility. But if there's even the smallest chance he's wrong about this, he doesn't want to leave her.

So he stays, but spends the next few hours panicking that he may have lost both Gibbs and Ziva in one single night.

…

"What are we going to do?"

It's the first thing she says when she rolls over in the morning and looks at him with shattered eyes. He hasn't slept a wink and his head is full of storm clouds, so it's not immediately clear to him to what she is referring. What are they going to do without Gibbs? What are they going to do now that that they've crossed an emotional and physical line? What are they going to do right now when they get out of bed and face a day that is sure to wound them? He's not sure he has the answer to any of those questions, and so he just blinks at her and tries to ask her to explain herself without actually asking her. The heartbreaking worry on Ziva's face somehow multiplies and seeps into her skin, and she lifts a warm hand from beneath the blankets to press it against his stubbled cheek.

"Did you sleep?" she asks. Her voice is hushed and aching with concern, and it makes the back of his throat burn.

"A bit," he lies. He doesn't think the truth is relevant, so he dismisses it. "What are we going to do about Gibbs?" he guesses.

She doesn't blink. She just stares intently at him and nods once. She doesn't move her hand, and he finds himself wanting to curl up against her. But that's not their reality this morning.

"We're going to go to the hospital and make sure he's stable," he says, making up their plan as he goes along. "We're going to leave the others to watch over him. And you and me are going to go raise hell at Metro PD until we're satisfied that they have all the evidence they need to keep the driver of that car in jail for good."

The ghost of a smile crosses her face. He's not sure why his plan pleases her (or amuses her, God forbid), but she doesn't argue against his decision. Then she throws him a curveball.

"You are his power of attorney, yes?"

He swears his heart literally stops. He feels it still, and then suddenly pound again at twice the speed as before. Oh, Christ. Forget the responsibility for the team suddenly thrust upon him. How he has the responsibility of Gibbs' life in his hands. He wishes he didn't have to remember that, but it is right of her to remind him. He needs to prepare himself for the tough decisions today, and she knows it.

"Yeah," he says, suddenly feeling the weight of Gibbs' body crushing his chest. "Yeah, it's me."

Most people don't have a power of attorney. Not when they're in generally good mental and physical health. But their team has a knack for attracting life-threatening trouble.

Ziva shuffles closer to him so that they are naked chest to naked chest. She seems utterly unconcerned by this, but he is still not sure where her head is regarding…them. He feels another slap of guilt over wondering

"You are not alone," she whispers to him.

He knows that is meant to be a comforting statement, but what a choice of words. She seems to realize this is a millisecond later, and her breath catches almost at the same moment as his. They both freeze as they stare at each other, and for a few moments all he can feel is pain in his chest. He said that to her once. He said it in her native tongue and straight from the heart. And she nodded and cried and assured him she understood, and then boarded a plane and flew off to Adam.

It still burns when he thinks of it.

Ziva briefly closes her eyes and swallows, but then slides her arm around his back to hold them together. She presses her forehead against his and whispers against his mouth. "And you are not alone," she repeats, but her changed inflection tells him what he wants to know.

He is not another Adam to her.

Her mouth is warm and honest against his, and while this day will never crawl out from beneath dark and heavy clouds for them, he thinks there may be light in other places.

…

They whisper the same expletive—him in English, her in Hebrew—when they're directed to Gibbs' intensive care room. It's the same room he occupied after he was caught in an explosion on a boat several years ago. They were granted a miracle that time, but Tony doubts they'll be treated to a repeat performance.

They stand at the glass window and watch as nurses change Gibbs' dressings. He looks small and pale and vulnerable, and the sight is so abrasively different to what they're used to that Tony isn't even sure it's Gibbs in there. He sucks in a sudden, harsh breath, and then feels Ziva's fingers squeeze his. He grabs onto her and doesn't try to let go.

"Oh, dear."

Tony jumps with Ziva at the unexpected sound of Ducky's voice beside them. He looks dapper as always in a fresh suit and bowtie—Tony realizes he's in the same rumpled clothes he wore yesterday—but the grim look of resignation that settled on his face in the dying minutes of last night (no pun intended) hasn't shifted. That look plus Tony's gut and Ziva's silence is enough to tell him that the fight is likely already over. The outcome is inevitable.

He knows all too well that some things just _are_.

Even still, he tries to find the bright spot. "He made it through the night." It's supposed to sound positive, but his throat is so squeezed by impending tears that it sounds thin and unsure.

Ducky looks him directly in the eye, as if checking whether Tony really believes what he's saying. Of course he doesn't, and Ducky gives him a knowing look before he returns his gaze to Gibbs' room.

"Has Timothy spoken to Abby?" Ducky asks with concern, and his meaning is clear. _Does Abby understand what's going to happen?_

It's not hard to imagine how badly Abby will deal with this. She has an incredibly tough road ahead.

"I don't know," Tony replies. "He took her home last night. I'm sure he started the conversation. But we're all going to have to finish it together."

Ziva draws a deep breath and lets go of his hand. "I will make contact with Gibbs' father," she says, and then leaves quickly.

Tony turns and opens his mouth to tell her he'll do it. Surely that's his responsibility? But she's already gone.

He thinks he's failed another test of leadership.

…

They're told he needs brain surgery. Tony doesn't understand the ins and outs of it, but takes his cues from Ducky who nods with understanding and reassurance. Gibbs' chances of making it through the surgery and recovering are small. His chances without it are non-existent. Abby cries as Tony signs the release that permits the hospital to go ahead with it, and then he spends five minutes alone in the men's room trying to stop his hands from shaking and his stomach from rolling. He has a terrible feeling that Gibbs would not agree to the surgery if given the choice, and that it is all for the benefit of his family, not him.

He wonders if Gibbs would ever forgive him.

…

They each get a minute or two alone with him—father figure, mentor, trusted friend—before they take him away. There's no time to wait for Jackson to arrive.

Tony touches his cool, rough hand and spends his first minute just looking at the face he's seen almost every day for the last 13 years. He focuses on the lines and broken capillaries, takes in the shape of his nose and mouth. He tries to store away every detail in his memory, one last time.

He knows he needs to say goodbye now, but he doesn't have a clue what to say. Gibbs would, if their positions were reversed. And he'd only need a word or two.

A memory falls on him line a ton of bricks. A decade ago Tony _was_ dying, and Gibbs leaned over him in a blue-tinged room, smacked his head and told him he didn't have permission to die. In that moment, Tony had felt loved like a son and cared about, even amid the fear and agony. He thinks it's only fair now to return the favor.

He leans over Gibbs' face as tears sting his eyes. "Thanks, Dad," he tells him with a half smile. "You were John Wayne. And you fought like Rocky. But we give you permission to go."

He hesitates a moment longer, half expecting Gibbs to smirk at him. But there's no response. No indication that Gibbs heard him. No promise that he ever will again.

It's time for goodbye.

Tony leans down and briefly kisses his forehead. "I love you," he whispers, and then turns and leaves before he embarrasses both of them by falling apart.

…

They wait in the family room, with its small couches, pastel walls and photographs of fluffy white clouds. They expect it to take hours, so when the doctor pushes the door open just 20 minutes after they wheeled Gibbs off to surgery, Tony's stomach falls to his knees.

 _Here it comes._

"I'm sorry," she starts, and it's all she needs to say.

The world crashes down on his shoulders right before his body goes numb. Abby's scream reaches his ears through layers of cotton wool, but the agony of it still hits him square in the chest. He takes it in and makes it his own.

When he blinks again the doctor is gone. Abby and McGee are locked in a tight hug as she cries and wails from her soul. Ducky and Vance stand by the door, blinking rapidly and holding on to professionalism as they discuss details in hushed voices. Ziva stands alone by the back wall and stares out the small window. Her back is to him so he cannot see her expression, but her shoulders are slumped in defeat.

He moves to her with leaden legs and stands by her shoulder. When he takes her hand she turns her head to look at him with pain he hasn't seen since Somalia.

"What are we going to do?" she asks him for the second time that day.

He still doesn't have the answer. Gibbs' shoes are too big to fill so soon after his passing, if they're ever to be filled at all. And while he doesn't believe in the afterlife, he finds himself hoping that Gibbs' spirit will pause in its way out the door to give him the answer they all need right now. But it doesn't, and all he can do is shake his head and hug her.

…

Gibbs' basement is quiet, dusty and comforting, just like the man himself. There aren't enough makeshift sawhorse chairs to go around, so Ducky takes the one stool and the rest of them end up sitting on the floor across three walls. Tony gives McGee's shoulder a break and bears Abby's tears for a while. McGee and Jimmy sit together, but three feet apart. Ziva sits alone—again—directly across from Tony with her arms and legs crossed and grief etched in her brow.

"It's not fair," Abby tells them. "He did so much good and some evil person just comes along and…" She stops, unable to make reference to what has just happened. Not yet.

He wants to tell her that karma doesn't exist. That things just happen. But he chooses to walk on eggshells. His opinion might break her, and that would be unnecessarily cruel.

"He'll go to jail," he assures her. "For a long time."

Abby snorts in a very un-Abby-like way. "What good does that do Gibbs?"

"None," he agrees, but leaves it there.

What else is there to say?

…

Fornell arrives with a lot of whisky, and passes out plastic cups before braving the discomfort of a sawhorse.

"I swear to God," he says darkly between sips of Dewars, "if it's the last thing I ever do, I'm going to find out how he got those goddamn boats out of here."

Perhaps it's because of the desire to escape the oppressive grief, but Tony hasn't laughed so hard in years.

…

They're drunk by dinnertime. It is not the healthiest coping mechanism but goes a long way towards team building. And Tony is beginning to realize that it's exactly what they need.

They share stories and memories about his life as they knew it. Try to calculate how many slaps he'd dolled out (and how many were actually justified). Wonder how many cases he'd worked. How many people he'd helped. Lives he'd changed. How many people he'd loved and lost.

Too many.

Ducky tells them the full story of the time soon after he met Gibbs and he pushed a French gendarme off a cliff for messing with a crime scene. Gibbs had talked the then director of the NIS into letting Ducky keep his job. "I never adequately thanked him," he laments.

No one needs to tell him that it wasn't necessary.

Fornell offers the flip side. "I'm never going to forgive him for introducing me to Diane."

Tony smirks, but Abby bristles. "You got a daughter out of that."

Fornell nods and throws back more booze. "And for that alone, he'll get into heaven."

He was raised Catholic, but Tony isn't sure if he believes in heaven and hell anymore. He doesn't think Gibbs did. But just in case, he sends a silent prayer to God that he turn a blind eye to the bad Gibbs did and let him rest with his daughter.

He'd been waiting for such mercy since the moment he'd heard she was gone.

…

His cheeks are warm and his head feels thick when he carefully makes his way out to the back porch late that night. Ziva sits on a wooden loveseat that Tony is sure Gibbs made by hand, and his suspicions are confirmed when he notices that _Shannon's seat_ has been carved into the wooden back rest. He tries not to fall on Ziva as he takes residence beside her. The two of them barely fit there together but he doesn't mind the squeeze and Ziva doesn't scowl or shoo him away.

"The sky did not fall," she tells him.

He looks up, as if to check. The clouds are dark, thick and low above them. "No," he sighs. "He'd probably be angry about that."

She cracks a smile and then tentatively puts her hand on his. Warmth fills him. "Are you okay?" she asks softly.

He flips his hand so that her fingers thread through his. "I don't know how to answer that," he replies honestly.

Her head falls against his shoulder. "I know." She pauses. "I'm here. When you need me. When you are done being there for everyone else."

The promise makes him smile because he loves her. But there's guilt and bitterness in his throat. "I don't think I've done a good job of that so far."

"You have," she argues softly. "Perhaps you do not feel it, but we see it."

He doesn't want to argue—doesn't want to make her reassure him—so he says nothing. They sit in silence and blossoms float on the breeze. Moments of peace that collide with the cacophony of grief within them. He feels himself begin to drift off with the panic of what lies ahead—for him, for the team, for his relationship with his partner—until she grounds him with a squeeze of his hand.

"Tony? Last night…it was not just because I needed you in the moment," she tells him, and when he looks down at her the raw vulnerability in her eyes tears his heart open.

His throat is so tight it steals his voice and he can only whisper back to her. "It wasn't for me, either."

She nods, smiles, and leans in to him, and they sit with the comfort of their multilayered partnership until Fornell comes out to say goodnight.

…

They sleep in Gibbs' living room. Abby on the couch, Ducky in the recliner, and the others spread out across the floor. Abby sleepily hums the theme to _Bonanza_ as Tony lays his head on a pillow next to Ziva. Jimmy's already snoring, and one glance across at McGee and his open-mouthed drooling tells Tony he's asleep too. He wants to laugh, or draw something on his face with a Sharpie. He thinks Gibbs would slap him for it, but probably laugh on the inside. He leaves it for now. Maybe later.

Abby's humming gives way to heavy breathing as she drifts off. That leaves Ziva. He turns his head to look at her and finds her watching him under heavy eyelids. She lifts her hand to gently cover his eyes, and he smiles.

"Rest," she whispers.

He nods, and her hand shifts to rest on his chest. It's an anchor that calms him.

He keeps his eyes closed as he processes the day in his head. A heartbreaking, gut-wrenching loss from which they'll never fully recover. A gamble that didn't pay off. But he wouldn't have done things differently.

He began the day not knowing what to do. Time, grief and alcohol didn't change that. But as he lies in the dark with the sounds of his family sleeping around him, it occurs to him that the answer to what to do now is kind of obvious. It won't fix the past. It won't change history. It won't magically heal them. But really, there is only one thing to do. He had wanted Gibbs' spirit to give him guidance before it left them once and for all, but he realizes that the man himself gave it to them over and over again over the years: they have to slog through it together.

It's rule number 15: Always work as a team.


End file.
